Otto Dix. Have you ever heard this name? Probably not, yet he's a very notable witness of a dark age, author of numberless drawings and paintings that resemble more the inner landscape of a psycho than an artist. And I wrote about him today without realising the fact that today it's Good Friday!
Yes, whenever I look at those paintings and drawings, I think to myself: "Oh, man, such a terrible nightmare it has to be so you have no other option than throwing all that shit far away into other people's minds, so your nightmares became their nightmares".
After all, is not art about that? I mean, expressing your own impressions, turning things inside out and making others to vibrate at your own fundamental frequency, no matter how much it takes. This certainly provides some kind of relief. Sharing your fears does alleviate your anguish. Think of that as sobbing on the shoulder of a friend. Sobbing all your life on the shoulder of a friend after enduring some hard visions and experiences. But is it all about art? Some kind of sadomasochist play where some use others and some others want to be used? Who knows what kind of personal inferno is anyone in around you. But there must be something else in art.
Making this 5 minute tour into this hellish catalogue of macabre, sordid world of Dix I have been struggling to find a spark of hope in any of his characters. No way. Not in the stuffy gentlemen, low life prostitutes, nude old and starving pregnant women or mutilated war veterans he indulged himself portraying. Not even in the eyes of the children he depicted. Certainly not in the crowd of skulls and corpses he obsessively captured on his canvases. So what? I was at the very verge of giving it up. I would end wrapping up the whole thing with some over-the-average terrible grin upon the face of a dead man.
Then I took a step back and saw those eyes. The ones that farewell the video, you know. They appeared at first glance as inexpressive as the others, yet those particular eyes wanted me to dig deeper. I did. There were reflections on them. The deeper I would dig in, the more light would hit my own eyes, so I placed them twice along the footage, as if they were set to provide light in the murk. I wonder to myself if Mr. Dix ever noticed them. He certainly enjoyed his children, but I am not sure whether he ever overcome his nightmares.
But those eyes, he should see them. They were shinning into the darkness.
